Ancient Aliens S06E13 “Aliens in America” covers familiar territory for everyone who reads this blog regularly. I have previously discussed the Smithsonian conspiracy covered in this episode in a separate blog post as well as the background material to my review of the episode of America Unearthed that covered the same imaginary conspiracy. What must viewers of H2 think when multiple shows tell them that the Smithsonian is engaged in a conspiracy to suppress the truth?

“Is there more to America’s past than is found in our history books?” asks the narrator, echoing Scott Wolter’s infamous “The history we’ve all been taught is wrong,” and I sincerely wonder if Ancient Aliens is purposely trying to pick a fight with America Unearthed. This is the second time the show has “borrowed” claims and language from America Unearthed. Could Ancient Aliens be jealous of its higher-rated competitor? We open with a UFO sighting from Stephenville, Texas from 2008, a UFO sighting covered on the premiere episode of NatGeo’s Chasing UFOs some years ago, and UFO Hunters on History before that. The US Air Force reported that they were conducting training flights at the time, and the Center for Skeptical Inquiry determined that viewers saw military-grade flares. Since this UFO isn’t old, I don’t see what it has to do with ancient astronauts. “Could aliens have a special interest in America?” the narrator asks, sounding like Scott Wolter’s demented twin. But this is really David Childress’s hour since he is actually Scott Wolter’s spiritual twin, babbling on about America being “an unusual continent full of magic and mystery.” So that’s our theme: American Exceptionalism, Alien Edition. So we look at another America Unearthed favorite, the Serpent Mound of Ohio, as well as medicine wheels, kivas, and so on. The show asserts that “Star Beings” visited these sights to deliver civilization to the benighted humans, and we get a special guest: Zuni elder Clifford Mahooty! He, too, was on America Unearthed where that show left out his ancient astronaut beliefs in order to make him seem more credible as an expert on hidden Grand Canyon cities. We’ll get to that later in this show, too. “There’s definitely evidence that aliens visited North America in the distant past,” Giorgio Tsoukalos said, stretching the definition of “evidence” to include rock cravings of stylized humans and geometric shapes. Mahooty takes Tsoukalos to a petroglyph site and tells him about “legends” that Star People visited the area. Tsoukalos asserts that these beings descended from the sky on fiery shields, but he doesn’t have anything to offer other than the suggestion that petroglyphs are whatever his imagination can conceive. A triangle surrounded by dots becomes for him a triangular alien spaceship (as per 1980s ufological speculation, originating in sightings of the B2 stealth bomber) flying through the stars. Tsoukalos tries to make the case for American exceptionalism by asserting that Native Americans have myths that are just as good as European myths, which would be admirable except that for him all myths are evidence that stupid humans could only tell stories about their direct experiences. In discussing the Hockomock Swamp in Massachusetts we listen to tales about “UFO” sightings at the Bridgewater Triangle, but even the show can do nothing more than claim that folklore and stories talking about Native shamanic interactions with spirit beings should be read literally. Jumping to European colonists, they start to twist facts to fit this narrative. From an eighteenth century edition of The Gentleman’s Magazine they claim to have record of a UFO sighting in Bridgewater in 1760 involving a large “sphere of fire,” but they show the January 1762 edition of the magazine, which doesn’t have this account. It appears much later, in December 1762 (contained in the same bound annual volume—hence the mix-up), in an epitome of the most recent Philosophical Transactions. There, the account has it that the supposed “ball of fire” (which Tsoukalos mistakenly calls a “sphere”) was, and I quote, “about five inches in diameter,” and the Transactions reported that it was “a meteor.” Undoubtedly it was, whatever its real size. The talking heads mix up all the details as they summarize the Gentleman’s Magazine account poorly, so I will give the piece as actually written since none of them can get it straight:

No. III. An account of a meteor and whirlwind in New England. The meteor was seen on the 10th of May, 1760, about ten o’clock in the morning, at Roxbury, a town joining to Boston: It was a ball of fire, about five inches diameter, drawing a train of light after it; it was of a white brightness, and cast a shade in strong sunshine. We are told it was seen in the South-East, but that it moved parallel to the horizon from the North-East to the South-West. It seems strange that the quarter from which it moved should not be the same as that where it was seen. Such, however, is the relation, as published by the committee. This meteor is said to have produced a noise, which filled a circle of eighty miles diameter, of which Bridgewater was nearly the centre; Roxbury was near the circumference of this circle; for it was not seen near the centre, because there it passed too near the Sun to be visible: At Bridgewater, we are told, the noise was heard about half an hour after nine, and at Roxbury about 5 minutes after ten; yet, after the course of this meteor was a diameter of the circle of which Bridgewater was the centre, it seems strange that the noise it produced should be heard half an hour sooner, under the middle of the line it described, than under the beginning of it; for as Roxburg (sic) is north of Bridgewater, and the course of the meteor was from the North-East it must have passed over Roxburg, before it passed over Bridgewater.

I have no idea what was meant by the sound issue, but then neither do the talking heads. Possibly the reports were recorded incorrectly somewhere or otherwise confused. After the commercial, we travel to Nevada, to Winnemucca Lake, where last year archaeologists found petroglyphs that the show bizarrely asserts were radiocarbon dated—impossible since stone can’t be carbon dated. It was the carbonate that formed atop the stones that was dated. Interestingly, no one is suppressing the fact that these petroglyphs date from 8000 BCE to 12,000 BCE and are the oldest known in the Americas: This was widely reported in the media. David Wilcock thinks that the rock art is proof of a “civilization” that predates Mesopotamia, oblivious to the fact the humans have been making rock art since the Stone Age and don’t need cities and agriculture to do so. Many, many cultures had rock art before Mesopotamia. Childress thinks that geometric shapes in the rock art look like aliens, and Wilcock thinks that “spirals” are “unusual” shapes that indicate an awareness of spiral-shaped galaxies, as though spirals aren’t found in nature, or in the altered states of consciousness associated with shamanism. What the hell did the narrator mean that these petroglyphs “predate even the earliest known Native American tribes”? Modern tribes are only a few centuries old, but the Paleoindians have evidence of their activities in America back to 12,000 BCE or earlier. This, naturally, leads us to the search for other “lost” civilizations, specifically in the Grand Canyon. The show blatantly asserts that the 1909 Grand Canyon hoax was a factual occurrence in which G. E. Kinkaid discovered an underground city full of mummies. Childress tells the story as though it were fact, and the idiots talking about the cave don’t even get the details of the article correct—Childress doesn’t recognize the article as following the discredited theory that India was the origin of all civilization and thus takes the comparisons to Egypt and Tibet in the article is evidence of Egyptian and Buddhist incursions in America! The show further blurs fact and fiction by using an unrelated vintage photo of a man at the Grand Canyon without informing viewers that this is not the fictional G. E. Kinkaid but rather a stock image, suggesting factual confirmation for a story that simply does not exist. The show then confuses the order of events given in the hoax article (available in my Library) to create a false narrative. The original article discussed Kinkaid and “Smithsonian” archaeologist “S. A. Jordan,” but here the narrator makes Kinkaid report the story to the Arizona Gazette and only then contact the Smithsonian, who send Jordan. This is not how the hoax gave the story, and this massaging of events plays into a conspiracy mindset. There were in fact two articles, but only one mentioned the Grand Canyon: The first Gazette article of March 12 merely said Kinkaid, by himself, made a few archaeological discoveries while navigating the Colorado River and would return the next year to explore further; the second, a month later (April 9), offered contradictory details—now there was an elaborate expedition backed by the Smithsonian that had been working the whole time. The two cannot be reconciled easily; if I had to guess, a slight traveler’s tale served as inspiration for the more elaborate hoax. Childress asserts that the cave’s treasures were sent to Washington, D.C. and then disappeared—but this isn’t a detail found in the 1909 article or any other documentary source. The only place this occurs is in Raiders of the Lost Ark, whose ending Childress used to illustrate the Arizona cave story in his original 1993 report on the incident, and which he seems to have now confused for a conspiracy that he himself invented in 1993. Childress is the origin point for Smithsonian conspiracies, writing about them for World Explorer magazine, as I have documented.Childress claims the caves were sealed with metal gates and doors, despite having no documentary evidence of this; indeed, the show asserts that after the 1909 article not a single scrap of information was ever reported. So how does he know this? “Allegations.” Childress scoffs that the Smithsonian refuses to confirm the story and has let both the archaeologist and the cave vanish into history, never doubting either actually existed. The narrator asserts that America government is suppressing the truth, and cites the existence of two Arizona Gazette articles a month apart (March 12 and April 9) as proof this was no hoax. On the contrary; the existence of the earlier article is the very warrant and basis for the later hoax. Whether it was mere setup, a test run, or the silly tale of a hoaxer with a long game, there remains not a shred of evidence that G. E. Kinkaid ever existed. Oh, the thrill of rewriting the history books! Various talking heads salivate over the possibility, but they struggle to find a connection between the cave and aliens. That’s why they have to try to bring in Hopi myths of how the gods brought them to the Grand Canyon—we’ve heard this story on Ancient Aliens before—and Mahooty reappears even though he isn’t a Hopi. From vaguely sourced modern stories, the show links the Hopi’s ancient myth of having arisen from underground at the dawn of time to Kinkaid’s imaginary cave. The hoax was almost certainly inspired by such stories in the first place since the 1909 hoaxer made the same connection: “among the Hopi Indians the tradition is told that their ancestors once lived in an underworld in the Grand Canyon.” Ancient Aliens mistakes the source material for confirmation of the hoax. After the break we talk about cattle mutilation, which is just gross. The “injuries” to the dead cows are a well-known, completely natural consequence of decay, and I have no interest in watching dead animals. Sorry. I skipped ahead. Here’s the only interesting thing, an excerpt from the court journals of James I for February 10, 1606, in a letter from Sir Edward Hoby to Sir Thomas Edmondes:

We have been here very much troubled with an accident fallen out, and yet by no means can be discovered, about the City of London and some of the shires adjoining. Whole slaughters of sheep have been made, in some places to number 100, in others less, where nothing is taken from the sheep but their tallow and some inward parts, the whole carcasses and fleece remaining still behind. Of this sundry conjectures, but most agree that it tendeth towards some fireworks.

The show presents this in a different, massaged form from a 1946 edited volume rather than older versions. It seems to refer to the suggestion that fireworks, then a popular entertainment used regularly and on a massive scale, were killing the sheep, either through the explosions themselves or, more likely, the concussion caused by the explosions set off in pastures. Even the narrator wonders why sophisticated aliens would want to mess with cow and sheep guts. The explanation has something to do with monitoring cows for trans-species viruses, though you’d think a blood test would work better than genital and anus theft. Following this are more modern events, including a shutdown of intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles at an Air Force base supposedly caused UFOs. Not ancient. Don’t care. Jason Martell claims UFOs “have taken an interest in our nuclear facilities,” and we hear that aliens are upset about atom bombs and whether humans will destroy the planet. To relate this back to our theme, Ancient Aliens finds a 1949 FATE magazine article called “Tribal Memories of Flying Saucers” by an alleged Native American named Oge-Make. I’m not even going to dignify this with a debunking on the merits: Oge-Make, the supposedly Navajo author, is a fraud: She was actually the science fiction author and popular science writer L. Taylor Hansen, who purposely rewrote native myths to support the UFO movement, the existence of Atlantis, and (I am not making this up) the idea that white people gave civilization to Native Americans in the distant past. Hansen’s pseudonym is well-known; how Tsoukalos and Ancient Aliens could have missed it, I cannot imagine except through wilful ignorance or fraud. As we bring this turkey in for a landing, we review the War of 1812 as the British burn Washington, D.C. The weather changed fast, and thunderstorms and a tornado helped end the British assault by putting out the fires and driving the British back. “And Washington, D.C. was saved!” Childress says. His account is very close to one published by the U.S. Air Force, but to make it seem miraculous he leaves out the devastating destruction the tornado caused to the rest of the city. With no evidence whatsoever, the show asks if the storm was caused by aliens to “protect the fragile American experiment.” Aliens apparently watch Sean Hannity and like freedom of religion and democracy, according to the show. And the talking heads all agree that the United States was “prophesied to exist” (in the words of Childress) and is under the beneficent protection of the alien gods who shine their glory upon America, beacon of light and the greatest most wonderful country in not just history but in all of the universe. Remember: These are the same aliens who fifteen minutes earlier were turning off America’s military defenses because they didn’t like nuclear weapons and thought we were going to kill ourselves. So, to recap: Aliens are powerful enough to change history to ensure America can be the best country ever, but are unable or unwilling to step in to stop nuclear weaponry despite their utter disapproval of humanity’s destructive tendencies. Oh, and something, something, Egyptians in the Grand Canyon… aliens.

As far as I know, H2 has not released any ratings information for the 2013-2014 season.

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john roberts

7/12/2015 08:32:33 am

Jason contact me asap i have proof of north american aliens.everyone has been looking in the wrong place .call me asap.6786709426

Scott David Hamilton

2/1/2014 05:36:01 am

Such is the nature of the fringe-o-sphere that it doesn't really matter that "Oge-Make" and "Rev. Sequoya" were really Lucille Hansen -- so long as it is more convenient to believe her stories are true they'll just rationalize away the deception. I've seen it asserted that Hansen was being completely truthful because she was an honorary member of these tribes, or that it was her editors at Fate and Amazing Stories that rewrote her work to be from a "native" perspective.

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Dan

2/1/2014 05:49:57 am

Listening to Childress' affected pseudo-intellectual nasal voice gets really old really quickly. But its a pretty good clue about the level of bullshit he's pushing -- the more affected, the deeper the fraud.

On the bright side, though, we got a nice in-the-field segment with Giorgio in Arizona. I guess he figures he has to get out of the interview chair and out in the world if he wants to save this sinking ship of a show.

David Childress also nods and shakes his head when he speaks making every word confussing.

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Dave

6/4/2017 11:33:00 am

I agree, its almost like hes trying to force the words out by pushing them through his mouth! I can't stand listening to him and watching him talk it drives me nuts

Titus

2/1/2014 08:44:55 am

Mr. Childress reminds me of the worst managers I had in corporate america. He pontificates and the brain dead believe him.

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KIF

2/1/2014 09:03:22 am

Childress - There's worse than him - Doreen Virtue comes to mind. There's a whole Atlantic Ocean full of weirdos worse than Childress

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BillUSA

2/2/2014 03:23:12 pm

Linda Moulton Howe comes to mind.

Kev

2/7/2014 09:13:39 pm

KIF, Sorry, but there is nothing worse than Childress for 2 reasons. First, His voice makes fingernails on a chalkboard sound like a Mozart symphony. Second, He's affected with the worst case of BILL BIRNES FEVER I've ever seen.
BILL BIRNES FEVER is defined as: a mental illness marked by Balding , Grey, or Finger in light socket hairstyles and theories that all world events are caused by aliens either passively or directly.

Titus

2/1/2014 09:40:47 am

Off topic but my consparicy friend was going off on the vela incident that was a ufo not an Israeli nuke test. I bet that will be on ancient aliens soon.

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J.A. Dickey

2/1/2014 11:59:37 am

Jason, i am in awe...

excellent review. said

by sincere sci-fi fan!

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Graham

2/1/2014 12:18:12 pm

There's a pretty good blog covering the 'UFOs shut down Americas Nuclear Missiles' story, it covers everything the conspiracy theorists don't want you to know.

http://timhebert.blogspot.com.au/

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Maarten

2/2/2014 02:22:34 am

Funny to see that after the 2012 hoaxers now other people are trying to add legitimacy to their clams by introducting a Hopi.

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Shane Sullivan

2/2/2014 11:26:18 am

So the aliens disabled our nuclear technology? Funny, I thought a previous episode had aliens *giving* us the technology in the first place.

Perhaps the Anunnaki gave us the technology, the Nordics shut it down, and the Greys mutilated our livestock while the Reptilians just watched.

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Only Me

2/2/2014 12:03:59 pm

In the meantime, the Plejarans want humanity to change, because the world is going to Hell in a hand basket.

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J.A.D

2/3/2014 01:11:40 am

Is H2 starting to 'tweak" AA so that all AU's audiences
will be a spill-over or a cross-over? The ratings are in?
If half this episode was archival file footage & the CGI is
a repeat of elsewhere, are they into a cost cutting cycle?
Did renting the subs + planes on AU impact poor lil AA?

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An Over-Educated Grunt

2/3/2014 08:28:24 am

I honestly think that Prometheus is starting to look at Committee as a source and a competitor, rather than the way it certainly was last year. I suspect, though I have no evidence to prove it and not enough interest to find it, that AU's less obvious wackiness, and single host on which to focus, makes it more appealing to the kind of viewers H2's been drawn in.

My one-sentence capsule review of this episode for my wife: "Eight thousand years ago, aliens told the natives that this would one day be a great country... for white people." It was a spectacularly disappointing episode, and really highlights that AA is becoming less coherent as time goes on. Trying to make a thematic link between the Hopi and the War of 1812 is a leap worthy of a Neal Stephenson novel, and even then I doubt it would be believable. Come to think of it, this particular episode seemed a lot like the last season of "The X-Files," condensed to one hour and drained of believability.

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RonNasty64

2/6/2014 01:06:27 am

Great review and comments. You've saved an hour for tonight (the show airs on Thursday evenings in Canada), which I would have wished back if I had watched tonight.

Funny how they forgot to mention that the USA LOST the war of 1812 after invading Canada and getting their asses kicked and then having their precious white house burnt down in response. By the way, it wasn't a magical rain storm and tornado that caused the Canadians to retreat. We had won. USA lost the war of 1812, read a book retards.

Yeah, some people should practice what they preach. Having studied the War of 1812, I do know some of the details. For instance, Canada at the time did not exist as a cohesive country. It was disjointed colony consisting of Upper and Lower Canada. Secondly, war was not declared against Canada, it was declared against Great Britain, which at the time was involved in the wars against Napoleon.
Initial military campaigns were marred by incompetent and inexperienced in both leadership and rank and file. Overall, it was 50/50 on the win loss ratio, but by 1813 both sides were looking for a way to end the war (on favorable terms for their respective sides). Napoleons abdication in early 1814, released thousands of Wellingtons Peninsular veterans for service on our side of the pond. Those troops that marched into Washington D.C. in the summer of 1814 were British Regulars with veteran status (no Canadian militia). The British campaign after that fizzled out with the failure to capture Ft. McHenry. The next campaign was supposed to be the capture New Orleans, but the war ended prematurely with signing of the Treaty of Ghent. The end result, no gains no losses, just a solidification of the border between Canada and the U.S. As for New Orleans, well that is where the final irony of this farce occurred. If you were on the west bank of the Mississippi, the British forces were pressing hard and were about to drive in our right flank. If you were on the east bank of the Mississippi, it was a smashing victory as the British forces dashed themselves to pieces on the American defenses. The mythology that grew out of the battle that should not have happened, in a war that should not have happened, is primarily where we get the idea that we won this sorry affair.
Did I say there were no winners or losers. Well that's not total true. The biggest losers were the Native Americans who allied themselves with the British.

I fill if real then yummy bet them tast like chicken .one time when i was a small kid i found a Ellen said and I took it down and send myself well this is a bad thing but could be good real quick cuz I care of it to it in my crack back and if it was what it was in b'ville it is Philomena so then for a real

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mrod

10/25/2014 10:41:31 am

WTF?!???

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mrod

10/25/2014 10:57:39 am

They're not all talking heads, but I agree, this episode had a lot of bs. H2 should just stop this series if they are just repeating everything and aren't even close to the facts. As for the nukes, if Dr. Steven Greer said it happened then it did - http://www.disclosureproject.org/

Have you ever heard of the Molina Documents that state during the 1600's the Spanish Jesuits covered a cave with Copper Doors with large handles? Read my thread and then look closely at the head kissing the ground and tell me that is not a picture carved of an Alien in stone that predates Coronado? This figure looksjust like we know of today as an Alien.
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/tnet-member-hunts/405520-survey-mina-virgon.html

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Stephen A.

3/27/2015 01:50:58 pm

Thanks for this great summary. I just watched part of this show (re-run about a year after first airing apparently) and my eyes hurt from rolling.

The link and text you provided here was helpful because I immediately went hunting for actual EVIDENCE they claimed for this "fireball" because printed evidence that early rarely exists, and I know this magazine from previous research. Sadly, as you note, it was a small meteor.

The rest of the show was skipped because it was becoming increasingly bizarre, so your synopsis was very helpful. Thanks for this wonderful resource!

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john roberts

7/12/2015 08:36:20 am

To all .i have indisputable evidence that everyone should see.if you want to help bring this to light please contact me asap...6786709426.

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I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.